China’s Yutu 2 Finally Uncovers the Reality Behind the ‘Mystery Hut’ on the Moon
Hint: It’s something you would expect to find on the Moon.
Last month, we reported that China’s Yutu 2 rover spotted a mysterious cube-shaped object while traveling across the Von Kármán crater. The internet immediately went wild with theories that the object referred to as a “mystery hut” or “strange cube” may be of alien origin.
The discovery was actually first made in November during the Yutu 2 rover mission’s 36th lunar day. The spotted object was approximately 260 feet (80 meters) away on the northern horizon. The discovery was reported on a Yutu 2 diary entry by Our Space, a Chinese language blog associated with the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
China’s space agency then announced it would travel toward the object at a super-fast lunar speed of 656 feet per hour (200 meters an hour) to get some answers.
Paul Byrne, a professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, told Inverse: “It is clearly a large boulder the size of a small boulder. And thus, by definition, it *is* a boulder.”
Byrne further specified:
“There is actually a definition of a boulder, according to something called the Udden–Wentworth scale, which says a boulder is a chunk of rock greater than 256 mm in diameter. So I think our lunar friend counts.”
The Yutu-2 team has now named the rock “Jade Rabbit” due to its resemblance to the animal.
In January of 2020, Yutu-2 released a treasure trove of images from the never-before-seen far side (or “dark” side) of the Moon. The images came from Chang’e-4 lander’s terrain camera and Yutu-2 rover’s panoramic camera.
At the time, an impressive 17,239 data files with a total data volume of 20.9 GB were released.
Source: Interesting Engineering
China’s Yutu 2 Finally Uncovers the Reality Behind the ‘Mystery Hut’ on the Moon